Report: Olby won’t tell Current TV whether he’ll anchor their New Hampshire coverage or not

posted at 9:30 pm on January 5, 2012 by Allahpundit

Does anyone really care? According to the Hollywood Reporter, his Current show at 8 p.m. averaged 52,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo on December 15. Compare that to the numbers for the rest of cable news the same day. Joy Behar’s dopey show on Headline News more than doubled him despite airing two hours later in the evening and opposite a Republican debate on Fox News. Following this latest dumb Olby drama day to day is like tracking a contract dispute involving the clean-up hitter on a single-A farm team. Even lefty sites that think he’s “whip-smart” have had enough.

The plot of the bewildering, apparently one-sided dispute between Countdown host Keith Olbermann and Current TV is thinning as it thickens. A source at the network tells Mediaite that, despite the ominous Hollywood Reporter story that “lawyers” are discussing the dustup over Current’s Iowa Caucus coverage, Olbermann’s attorneys have not been in touch with the network on that matter. The source also says that the network has invited Olbermann to anchor Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary coverage, but has not gotten a response…

[A]ccording to the network, Olbermann was more than “informed” about his absence from the schedule Tuesday night; he was responsible for it. A Current source confirmed to Mediaite that Olbermann was kept appraised of the Iowa Caucus plans at every turn, and acknowledged as much, in at least four or five emails dating back to mid-November. In those emails, Current executives tried to secure Olbermann’s participation in the program, as they have previously stated, but he refused…

The half of the story that Olbermann isn’t telling (at least not yet) is why he feigned ignorance of the schedule change, an apparent game of chicken to force his disgruntlement into the public eye.

Remember, Olby told reporters last week that as far as he knew he’d be doing his show live on Tuesday night to track caucus results, then went so far as to tell a fan on Twitter on Tuesday that he was headed into the office to get ready. If you believe Mediaite’s sources at Current, that’s all a big, self-serving lie. And incidentally, it’s not just the Hollywood Reporter that claims lawyers are now involved. The Wrap has heard that too, and a whole lot more:

“I hope Keith is part of our future, but it’s up to Keith,” an executive with Current who declined to be identified told TheWrap. “Keith set us in the right direction and we’re on that path now … and as I’ve learned over the years, everybody is replaceable.”…

Current executives have tired of Olbermann’s controlling nature and his evident aversion to sharing the spotlight with recently-hired hosts Cenk Uygur and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm.

How long senior management will tolerate what they term “Keith being Keith” remains to be seen…

For his part, Olbermann has tired of how slowly Current was building. Constant power outages aggravated the irascible anchor. Moreover, a spotty car service apparently had guests arriving late.

It sounds … so unlike him. Once Current pulls the plug, that’ll be four different networks he’s alienated; only CNN will be left among newsers, and they can’t be so crazy and desperate to think they can make it work when a left-wing network built around his star power couldn’t. So there are only two options. One: Go back to sportscasting. His bridges to ESPN are still smoldering as far as I know, but a rival network looking to cut in on ESPN’s market share might be willing to put up with his tantrums. Imagine the ratings and ballyhoo of Olby re-embracing his true talent of coming up with catchphrases to punctuate sports highlights. Two: He goes the Beck route and starts his own online network. There are bound to be a few hundred thousand Rethuglikkkan-haters out there willing to pay for the privilege of watching him rant — there are at least 52,000 in the demo who’ve somehow managed to find Current in their cable program guide — so why not solve the problem of not being able to get along with supervisors by eliminating supervisors? He could sift through lefty media and bring over Cenk and Kos and whoever else to pad out the schedule. Imagine: “The Media Matters News Hour.” There’s got to be a market for this. Current’s loss is YouTube’s gain!

DES MOINES, Iowa — Caucus night was chaotic in many places, with hundreds of voters, candidates showing up and the throngs of media who followed. The world’s eyes were on Iowa. But in the quiet town of Moulton, Appanoose County, a caucus of 50 people may just blow up the results.

Edward True, 28, of Moulton, said he helped count the votes and jotted the results down on a piece of paper to post to his Facebook page. He said when he checked to make sure the Republican Party of Iowa got the count right, he said he was shocked to find they hadn’t.

I read somewhere that handgun sales are going nuts. Perhaps Olby could land a nice “endorsement” contract with a paper target company – his mug would make a nice Saturday afternoon double-tap target at the local range.

Part of Olbermann’s psyche is to have someone to rant about/blame when things go wrong, such as when he discovers that 90ercent of his viewers on MSNBC did not follow him to Current TV. And that would be the eventual fatal flaw in Keith following the Glenn Beck route.

Create your own Internet channel with streaming video and downloadable podcasts, and you’re your own boss, with no one to answer to. But that also means if you lapse further out of the public spotlight and have less and less influence even within the batshirt crazy left crowd, there’s no one higher up to blame for your failure. All Olby could do is start whining about some sort of flaw in the Google link logarithmics or that his tech supplier is not streaming his videos fast enough and that’s causing people to not watch. Even for his own massive ego, lowering himself to a feud like that would be too pitiful not to notice.

(My bet’s still on Keith getting some sort of gig on HBO as a partner show to “Real Time with Bill Maher”. Evem if fellow Time-Warner cable channel CNN thinks Olby’s beyond the pale, the suits at HBO are far more liberal and Blue State insular, and would think people are willing to shell out $10 a month extra to have an Olby show coming on after Maher’s live show on Fridays and his reruns the rest of the week.)

I imagine Keith schlumping into the Current Executive office, dimly lit, with ominous music playing. Al Gore is seated at the boardroom table in a Trump wig, eyes squinted and lips pursed. Keith sits in his own flop sweat during the interminable moments before Gore points at him and says…

As for Olby? He’s just waiting another day or 2 to see what the Weather will be like up here. If he decides to go, all he has to do is hop on Algore’s Private Plane and make a 45 minute flight to MHT.

Right now the long range shows the daytime temps over the entire State on Tuesday to be at 32 degrees or warmer. No chance of any bad weather. It will even be 40 degrees on the Seacoast and down where the Infiltrators live.

Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, Anderson expressed his disappointment with that Party in 2011, stating “(t)he Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party.”
(More……)
=============

This is so typical of liberals.
They fawn and brag and go on and on and on about how “great and smart” their elected leaders and MSM activists are only to watch them crash and burn like the true narcissistic idiots that they truly are.
How many years did we see Olberman trotted around by liberals on TV show after TV show….quoted on newscasts….and quoted on blogs as some great liberal icon to smart for those Conservative peasants.
How many years did Conservatives laugh and condemn this blowhard for being nothing more than a cut and paste propagandist who never had a real opposing view on his show and would get caught in lie after lie after lie.

Now he can’t even make it on a far left channel run by Al Gore.
More people have watched the You Tube Super Bowl Volkswagon/Darth Vader commercial than have watched his show the whole time it has been on air.

Olbermann is and will always be nothing more than a blow hard douche bag….
….not the great liberal MSM leader that liberals made him out to be.

Next thing you know…liberals will be trying to convince Americans that a failed community organizer whose biggest accomplishments are writing to books about himself would make a great President…..
………..oh wait.

As former Governor Jon Huntswoman said “Who cares?” – Oh wait! That was yesterday, different pampered, but senile guy.
Is it a requirement of the stockholders of Current TV to go out and recruit liberal losers? I see they hired our Jennifer Granholm.That gypsy, was the worst Governor in Michigan…since oxen pulled carts!

Yeah, and for good reason. I had mixed feelings about even posting my comment above, and all I was talking about was letting out some frustrations on a piece of paper.

peski on January 5, 2012 at 9:49 PM

1) Saying if he catches fire, I won’t put him out — is different from saying I’d like to set him on fire. If you see what I mean :)

2) Hyperbole is good, which is what you were after anyway, but you stopped short because you left it in the realm of possibility. You stopped at the place where it wasn’t possible for you, but you needed to push it into the realm of not-possible for anyone. Ex: I’d like to land the Tardis on his ***.

3) You could just not wish him harm at all :) I know, I know, just sayin’.

— As far as Olberman — I don’t want to spend another minute on that guy.

The really sad thing is that there are no meds available for Narcicistic Character Disorder.

This drama parallels the palpable levels of anxiety and tension our country experienced a couple of months ago every Tuesday and Wednesday nights wondering whether or when Nancy Grace was going to be eliminated from The Great National Freak Show Dancing with the Stars.

And by the way folks, any time you see the Democrat Party referred to as the “Democratic” Party, it’s a deliberate ploy of the Democrat Party and their Mainstream Media lapdogs to make people subliminally think that they are the party of fairness and democracy.

For a perfect illustration of my argument, just look at their insidious theft of the traditional Red vs Blue imagery for their “Red” state Republican vs “Blue” state Democrat imagery – militarily it’s always been Blue (us) vs Red (the enemy).

Look at this way – Republican Party and Democrat Party —-> “I’m a Republican” and “I’m a Democrat”. But if we were to buy into the far-left’s subliminal propaganda scheme, the logical end result would be “I’m a Republican” and “I’m a Democratic”.